


She's No Good For You

by idrewacircle



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Unrequited Love, bela is cold sure, but hes being a reeeeeal creep, liet is being a creep here tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 16:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17206847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrewacircle/pseuds/idrewacircle
Summary: Set in the mid 1940's. Lithuania "courts" Belarus. She doesn't appreciate it.





	She's No Good For You

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Tolys and Natalya are not dating. At all.

“Are these _raspberries_?” Natalya plucks a berry from the pile and rolls it between her fingers, eyeing the sticky pink juices it leaves behind suspiciously. “In _October_?”

 

“Yes, fresh ones.” Tolys hands her the container. “I bought them from a Ukrainian woman this morning, two rubles.” He fidgets with his shaking hands, rubbing his thumbs over each other, watches her pop the berry into her mouth. “This was her last box.”

 

Natalya chews. “They’re tasteless.” She grimaces and thrusts the box back into his hands. “I don’t want them.”

 

“I could make you a jam out of them, if you like. I’ll add more sugar.” Tolys’s voice is reedy, trembling. He hears it himself, how it rises and cracks like a schoolboy’s. “Or a tart? How about kisielius?”

 

Natalya looks down her nose at him, face flat, disdainful. Tolys can practically hear her thoughts: _Pathetic._ “No. I said I don’t want them.” Natalya turns on her heel and strides back to her rocking chair. “You can go now.”

 

 

* * *

  


“Are you cold, Natalya?”

 

“I’m fine.” Natalya rubs her gloved hands together, as if she’s lighting a small fire, puffing on them intermittently. “What time is it?”

 

Tolys glances at his wristwatch. “The train should be here in another four minutes.” He undoes the buttons on his heavy down jacket, then shrugs it off his shoulders. “But please, Natalya, take my coat.” He holds it out to her in shivering hands.

 

“Keep it. I’m fine.” Natalya shoves her hands into her armpits and lowers her chin to her chest, bracing against another gust of icy sleet, and Tolys shivers _hard_ as the freezing rain soaks through his woolen sweater.

 

“I insist, Natalya. You look so cold, and since you’re so, _so_ thin—”

 

“Do _NOT_ pity me!” Natalya snarls, whipping around to glare at him. “Don’t you _dare_ pity me.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Tolys manages through chattering teeth. “I just mean that, well, I’m warm like this, I don’t need my jacket.” He wipes at his nose with a handkerchief.

 

“You don’t need your jacket.”

 

“No.”

 

“Because you’re warm.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Without your jacket.”

 

Tolys nods jerkily. His lips have gone an odd shade of purple, and the fingers that curl around the hem of his coat are completely white. “Fine.” Natalya snatches the coat and shoves her arms in, letting out a contented sigh.

 

Lord, Tolys hopes the train will be on time today. Please, please let it be on time.

  


* * *

  


“Natalya, are you in here?” Tolys raps on Natalya’s bedroom door again, three short knocks.

 

“No,” comes the curt reply. “Go away.”

 

“I bought you a present today. Could I come in?”

 

“No.” There’s shuffling inside, the sound of Natalya flinging off the blankets and pulling on a robe, probably. The door slits open, and the only thing Tolys can see is the brilliant, clear blue of her eye, shining in the hallway’s light. “Show me.”

 

“I wrapped it, so—”

 

“Then give it to me.” A pale, spindly hand snakes out of the gap, and Tolys places the box in its grasp. Natalya yanks it inside, and Tolys can hear how she fervently tears off the paper, then rips open the box.

 

“What is this?”

 

“Nail varnish, from America.” Tolys runs a hand over his hair, smoothing down his ponytail. “I thought you would like red.”

 

“How did you even get this?”

 

“An officer owed me a favor.”

 

Her eye returns to the gap, a ball of ice, floating in the darkness.

 

“Do you like it? He also had pink, and cream. I could get you those instead.”

 

“It’s okay.”

 

“Do you know how to put it on?” Tolys cocks his head, tries not to let his eagerness show, but it bleeds into his voice. “Because, you know, I could always help you.” He clears his throat. “The officer told me his girlfriend needs help putting it on, so he holds her hands and paints her nails for her.”

 

“I don’t need help.” Natalya slams the door shut. “Go away, Tolys.”

 

 

* * *

  


Tolys stumbles into his darkened room that night, clutching a bag of ice to his left eye. Messy stitches done by dim bathroom light run through his lower lip. He shouldn’t have spoken up in that meeting. He should’ve just kept quiet, should’ve left the glaring flaws of the plan alone. He made Stalin look like a fool in front of the entire party. He’s lucky they even let him keep his eye.

 

“That looks nasty,” Natalya murmurs from somewhere to Tolys’s left. Her hands come a second later, setting free his hair and lifting the ice away from his eye. “What did you do this time?”

 

“Tashka, please.” Tolys turns away, out of her grasp, though the sweetness of her touch still hovers on his skin. “Not tonight.”

 

Natalya chuckles, low and dark, like waves crashing and breaking in a storm. “Seriously? You’ve been trying to climb into my bed every single night this month.”

 

“But not _this_ night.” Tolys brushes past her, and carefully lowers himself into a seated position on his bed, swallowing a whine as his stiff and bruised back screams out in protest. He brings the ice back up to his swollen left eye, holding her judging gaze with his right.  “Please, Tashka, just leave me alone.”

 

“Then at least tell me _who_ did this to you.” Natalya glides over, her fine white nightdress almost translucent in the moonlight, something not lost on Tolys, despite his best efforts to stare only at her face. Natalya takes a seat on his lap, and spreads her legs wide on either side, boxing him in. “Tell me.” She smells of slightly bitter perfume, of wilting flowers, of something else familiar and new all at once that Tolys can’t seem to place. Natalya runs one hand through his hair again, the other deftly fingering open the buttons of his uniform. “Tell me now.” Her lips hover over the hollow of his neck, her breath heavy against his skin. “I want to know.” A soft kiss to his collarbone.

 

“Your brother,” Tolys breathes. He drops the half-melted ice pack on the floor, a wet _squelch_ as it lands.

 

“Don’t _lie_ to me, Tolvydas.” Natalya slides his unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders, then lifts off the undershirt as well. One hand returns to his hair, rubbing at his scalp, and the other traces a trail of bruises on his chest. Tolys’s arms curl around her waist, though he’s careful to keep his cold left hand off her hip. “We both know he would never do _this_.” She punctuates her statement with a jab of her finger, dead center where the officer’s ring had created a knot, and Tolys chokes on a groan, Natalya’s smug expression blurry through his tears. “I won’t even report the human, I just want to know who it was.”

 

“No,” Tolys grunts through gritted teeth. He knows Natalya’s telling the truth, knows she won’t do anything, but he can’t tell her, can’t let her know just how small the other man was, how weak, how weak _he_ was to have let it happen. That would be shameful.

 

“Then I’ll leave.” Natalya’s voice and eyes are hard, but her hands still knead his flesh, radiating warmth through him wherever they go.

 

“So leave.” Tolys waves in what he thinks is the direction of the door. “I’m not stopping you.”

 

Natalya smiles, teeth glinting in the moonlight. “You know, sweetheart,” she chuckles, “I think that might be the first time you’ve _ever_ tried kicking me out of your room.” Both her hands slide down his chest now, rubbing and prodding at his sensitive, swollen skin, memorizing each and every sore spot, and her lips return to his collarbone to nip a necklace. “I like it.”

 

“You only like me when I’m hurt.”

 

Natalya giggles. It’s a high-pitched sound, an eerie sound, something that makes Tolys’s hair stand on edge and his heart flutter, something that triggers an animal instinct in him, something that _screams_ at him to run away. “You know me so well, Tolvydas.” Natalya seals her lips over his.


End file.
